8 ms·

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/me

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce... For web developers, it's 34%, which is roughly the same as dentists. Computer "science" is kinda BS as a field.

tptacek 9y ago
In that breakdown, "web developer" very likely includes a large number of designers and marketing specialists. We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%.
- codinghorror 9y ago
  For example here https://wpengine-careers.com https://wpengine-careers.com — seems way more representative of the “average developer” job than Google. Getting in to Google is elite, like making the NBA, and they have extreme barriers to entry. I don’t think I could get a job at Google, for example; I would not pass their intensive multi-week screening process. I wouldn’t even try.
- walterclifford 9y ago
  > We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%. Is it possible that a "concerted effort to recruit and retain women" perhaps does more harm than good? Med schools in this country are now very nearly 50/50[1] and law schools are very slightly over 50% female[2]. Did medicine and law achieve this by the same type of concerted effort we've seen in tech? I honestly don't know the answer to that but I think it's an interesting question. I do feel though that we treat females who are doctors as simply doctors (and likewise for lawyers), not female doctors whereas in tech we have a habit of treating them like female developers instead of developers (and I'm referring to when that's done with the best intentions such as female-only hackathons, bootcamps, and meetups). [1] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-graduates-by-gender/ https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-gra... [2] https://www.enjuris.com/students/ranking-universities.html https://www.enjuris.com/students/ranking-universities.html
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Yes, that is what law firms did. Use the search bar at the bottom of the page to search author:rayiner for more information. Rayiner is an appellate lawyer (married to a corporate lawyer) and former/part-time compiler hacker, and he's written at length about how law fixed this problem deliberately.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    We definitely do NOT treat female doctors as just doctors. Women are the big spenders for medical care. Women greatly outspend men in medical care and women have a strong statistical preference for same gender care, especially for areas like gynecology where 90% of residents in training are female. It's quite easy to find a women's clinic, and while it's fairly easy for a man to find a male GP there are basically no men's clinics whatsoever. Further, for more "general care" men basically have no option but to have a female nurse, since 90% of nurses are female. On the off-chance that a male nurse needs to do something like insert a catheter for a female patient, they will almost always ask if the patient would prefer a female nurse. This option of a same gendered caregiver is not offered to male patients. When a woman goes to a gynecologist to talk about potentially embarrassing issues related to her reproductive system, basically everyone she sees is going to be a woman, including the front staff. Compare that to a man's experience going to a Urologist. Sure, most urologists are men, but the man will still have to tell the front staff person or nurse, who is almost certainly female, that he has ED, or some other problem.
    - walterclifford 9y ago
      > We definitely do NOT treat female doctors as just doctors I'm not sure if I wasn't very clear by what I meant by that in my original comment or if I just failed to understand your response - while I don't dispute the accuracy of anything you said following this line I don't quite understand how any of it is relevant (at least not regarding what I was trying to say). When I said "we treat females who are doctors as simply doctors (and likewise for lawyers), not female doctors" I mean: * I've often heard people being discussed as e.g. "a female dev" but don't often (never that I recall) hear anyone say "female doctor" (I'm referring to casual conversation, not discussions about who's gonna work the catheter on a patient) * We have female-only hackathons, bootcamps, and meetups, etc, do similar things exist in the medical field and if such things do exist are they as common? Are there many medical conferences open only to female doctors? * There are often articles/lists of prominent/powerful/etc "women in tech"[1][2][3]. Are similar such articles published in the same quantity for medicine? A quick google yields almost entirely historical results, where's the list of "30 Inspirational Women to Watch in Medicine in 2018"? * Is it a common practice for hospitals to make reports publicly available that detail what percentage of their doctors are female and how they plan to increase that number? * Do hospitals generally do anything to recruit (and/or retain) female doctors specifically or are their recruiting and retention efforts just focused on doctors? [1] https://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/30-inspirational-women-to-watch-in-tech-2017.html https://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/30-inspirational-women-to-... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/the-worlds-most-powerful-women-in-tech-2017-still-a-minority-their-clout-is-growing/#52d15d741217 https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/the-w... [3] https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/careers/10-most-powerful-women-in-tech-3613276/ https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/careers/10-most-po...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- majormajor 9y ago
  Is Google's process for women different than their one for white men? I only have direct experience of the latter, but the 2017 and 2011 versions were pretty similar. Their hiring process, as I saw it, was dominated by algorithmic college-course-type questions (as if nothing else I'd done in the last 6 years mattered at all) and years-of-experience type stuff (e.g. the message I got was good luck getting a manager job there unless you've got 5-10 years already doing it - don't try it if you're an up-and-comer with less than that). And apparently I was good enough to pass it in 2011 but not in 2017 :|. All of that is stuff that I think is highly tilted towards a certain profile of devs, and going to be hostile towards anyone who didn't follow the typical CS undergrad route. And that undergrad route is very unbalanced, as is the profile of e.g. established tech managers. If you're not willing to do much more training than most big companies, I don't see good steps to fix it outside of fixing the high school and college pipelines.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    >All of that is stuff that I think is highly tilted towards a certain profile of devs, and going to be hostile towards anyone who didn't follow the typical CS undergrad route. Having gone through one of these processes (not with Google, but another big 4 company), I'm quite sure this happens. The CS fundamentals might be easy to test for, but they've had very little impact on real world problems I needed to solve in my career. For someone who's a bit farther away from college and doesn't come from a rote memorization culture (which IMHO is inherently bad for problem solving), this serves as a screening mechanism without actually testing for what's useful on the job. I've been quite successful at interviews where they ask me to solve a little take-home project. In that case the rote memorizers who get through the Google process usually don't shine, because they're not able to put these things together properly. Recent CS grads still do well on those if they're competent.
- astura 9y ago
  >includes a large number of designers and marketing specialists Oh man!! OMG, you just reminded me of something. During the last dot com bubble I was entering college. I was planning on going into the field so I job shadowed a woman at one of the biggest companies in the world at the time. Her title was "e-business" or something like that. It was "e-[something]" like that and the prefix "e" was super popular at the time. Yeah, it was cool at the time... Anyway, The entire time I was job shadowing her (which I admit, was only about 4 hours, they gave us presentations and stuff too) she couldn't answer me the question of what she actually does. What her job was. She was kinda like "oh yeah, I work on this program" and showed it to me. I ask "so you built this? Neat!" and she'd answer "oh no, that's not me, that's the guys upstairs did." The entire time she danced around the question of what her job actually is other than "using a computer." Looking back, holy shit, that was a big sign we we're in a bubble and that bubble was so close to bursting!! I mean, wow, it was like "we are branching into e-business, look at us [smoke and mirrors]" It was just a really, really bizarre experience at the time - "Job shadow someone who can't tell you what their job is." I'm sure she got laid off 6-12 months later. She eventually took me to meet the guys upstairs who build the stuff, I wish I got to job shadow them instead. They were polite, humble, friendly, and down to earth. Oh yeah, and they knew what their job was! Anyway, I feel we're getting the same way here again - a ton of "staff" in the "tech/web business" who are totally superfluous. That's what it seems like to me anyways. To be clear, I'm not trying to dis women in tech, after all, I am one myself. I'm not saying all women in tech so no work - I'm saying bubbles bring in a lot of smoke and mirrors.

tptacek 9y ago

In that breakdown, "web developer" very likely includes a large number of designers and marketing specialists. We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%.

codinghorror 9y ago
For example here https://wpengine-careers.com https://wpengine-careers.com — seems way more representative of the “average developer” job than Google. Getting in to Google is elite, like making the NBA, and they have extreme barriers to entry. I don’t think I could get a job at Google, for example; I would not pass their intensive multi-week screening process. I wouldn’t even try.
walterclifford 9y ago
> We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%. Is it possible that a "concerted effort to recruit and retain women" perhaps does more harm than good? Med schools in this country are now very nearly 50/50[1] and law schools are very slightly over 50% female[2]. Did medicine and law achieve this by the same type of concerted effort we've seen in tech? I honestly don't know the answer to that but I think it's an interesting question. I do feel though that we treat females who are doctors as simply doctors (and likewise for lawyers), not female doctors whereas in tech we have a habit of treating them like female developers instead of developers (and I'm referring to when that's done with the best intentions such as female-only hackathons, bootcamps, and meetups). [1] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-graduates-by-gender/ https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-gra... [2] https://www.enjuris.com/students/ranking-universities.html https://www.enjuris.com/students/ranking-universities.html
- tptacek 9y ago
  Yes, that is what law firms did. Use the search bar at the bottom of the page to search author:rayiner for more information. Rayiner is an appellate lawyer (married to a corporate lawyer) and former/part-time compiler hacker, and he's written at length about how law fixed this problem deliberately.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  We definitely do NOT treat female doctors as just doctors. Women are the big spenders for medical care. Women greatly outspend men in medical care and women have a strong statistical preference for same gender care, especially for areas like gynecology where 90% of residents in training are female. It's quite easy to find a women's clinic, and while it's fairly easy for a man to find a male GP there are basically no men's clinics whatsoever. Further, for more "general care" men basically have no option but to have a female nurse, since 90% of nurses are female. On the off-chance that a male nurse needs to do something like insert a catheter for a female patient, they will almost always ask if the patient would prefer a female nurse. This option of a same gendered caregiver is not offered to male patients. When a woman goes to a gynecologist to talk about potentially embarrassing issues related to her reproductive system, basically everyone she sees is going to be a woman, including the front staff. Compare that to a man's experience going to a Urologist. Sure, most urologists are men, but the man will still have to tell the front staff person or nurse, who is almost certainly female, that he has ED, or some other problem.
  - walterclifford 9y ago
    > We definitely do NOT treat female doctors as just doctors I'm not sure if I wasn't very clear by what I meant by that in my original comment or if I just failed to understand your response - while I don't dispute the accuracy of anything you said following this line I don't quite understand how any of it is relevant (at least not regarding what I was trying to say). When I said "we treat females who are doctors as simply doctors (and likewise for lawyers), not female doctors" I mean: * I've often heard people being discussed as e.g. "a female dev" but don't often (never that I recall) hear anyone say "female doctor" (I'm referring to casual conversation, not discussions about who's gonna work the catheter on a patient) * We have female-only hackathons, bootcamps, and meetups, etc, do similar things exist in the medical field and if such things do exist are they as common? Are there many medical conferences open only to female doctors? * There are often articles/lists of prominent/powerful/etc "women in tech"[1][2][3]. Are similar such articles published in the same quantity for medicine? A quick google yields almost entirely historical results, where's the list of "30 Inspirational Women to Watch in Medicine in 2018"? * Is it a common practice for hospitals to make reports publicly available that detail what percentage of their doctors are female and how they plan to increase that number? * Do hospitals generally do anything to recruit (and/or retain) female doctors specifically or are their recruiting and retention efforts just focused on doctors? [1] https://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/30-inspirational-women-to-watch-in-tech-2017.html https://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/30-inspirational-women-to-... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/the-worlds-most-powerful-women-in-tech-2017-still-a-minority-their-clout-is-growing/#52d15d741217 https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/the-w... [3] https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/careers/10-most-powerful-women-in-tech-3613276/ https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/careers/10-most-po...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
majormajor 9y ago
Is Google's process for women different than their one for white men? I only have direct experience of the latter, but the 2017 and 2011 versions were pretty similar. Their hiring process, as I saw it, was dominated by algorithmic college-course-type questions (as if nothing else I'd done in the last 6 years mattered at all) and years-of-experience type stuff (e.g. the message I got was good luck getting a manager job there unless you've got 5-10 years already doing it - don't try it if you're an up-and-comer with less than that). And apparently I was good enough to pass it in 2011 but not in 2017 :|. All of that is stuff that I think is highly tilted towards a certain profile of devs, and going to be hostile towards anyone who didn't follow the typical CS undergrad route. And that undergrad route is very unbalanced, as is the profile of e.g. established tech managers. If you're not willing to do much more training than most big companies, I don't see good steps to fix it outside of fixing the high school and college pipelines.
- carlmr 9y ago
  >All of that is stuff that I think is highly tilted towards a certain profile of devs, and going to be hostile towards anyone who didn't follow the typical CS undergrad route. Having gone through one of these processes (not with Google, but another big 4 company), I'm quite sure this happens. The CS fundamentals might be easy to test for, but they've had very little impact on real world problems I needed to solve in my career. For someone who's a bit farther away from college and doesn't come from a rote memorization culture (which IMHO is inherently bad for problem solving), this serves as a screening mechanism without actually testing for what's useful on the job. I've been quite successful at interviews where they ask me to solve a little take-home project. In that case the rote memorizers who get through the Google process usually don't shine, because they're not able to put these things together properly. Recent CS grads still do well on those if they're competent.
astura 9y ago
>includes a large number of designers and marketing specialists Oh man!! OMG, you just reminded me of something. During the last dot com bubble I was entering college. I was planning on going into the field so I job shadowed a woman at one of the biggest companies in the world at the time. Her title was "e-business" or something like that. It was "e-[something]" like that and the prefix "e" was super popular at the time. Yeah, it was cool at the time... Anyway, The entire time I was job shadowing her (which I admit, was only about 4 hours, they gave us presentations and stuff too) she couldn't answer me the question of what she actually does. What her job was. She was kinda like "oh yeah, I work on this program" and showed it to me. I ask "so you built this? Neat!" and she'd answer "oh no, that's not me, that's the guys upstairs did." The entire time she danced around the question of what her job actually is other than "using a computer." Looking back, holy shit, that was a big sign we we're in a bubble and that bubble was so close to bursting!! I mean, wow, it was like "we are branching into e-business, look at us [smoke and mirrors]" It was just a really, really bizarre experience at the time - "Job shadow someone who can't tell you what their job is." I'm sure she got laid off 6-12 months later. She eventually took me to meet the guys upstairs who build the stuff, I wish I got to job shadow them instead. They were polite, humble, friendly, and down to earth. Oh yeah, and they knew what their job was! Anyway, I feel we're getting the same way here again - a ton of "staff" in the "tech/web business" who are totally superfluous. That's what it seems like to me anyways. To be clear, I'm not trying to dis women in tech, after all, I am one myself. I'm not saying all women in tech so no work - I'm saying bubbles bring in a lot of smoke and mirrors.